HOMEBREW Digest #3983 Mon 08 July 2002


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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
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Contents:
  RE: Cleaning Solutions ("Parker Dutro")
  Possibly stupid sparge question (Audie Kennedy)
  Yeast ("David Root")
  re: cleaners and sanitizers ("Doug Moyer")
  Re: PVC pipe as pressure vessel ("Mike")
  Plato and S.G. ("A. J. delange")
  re: how long will bottles stay sanitized? ("Dr. Pivo")
  Plato vs SG ("Dr. Pivo")
  Steve Is Right Again ("Phil Yates")
  RIMS - Optimum Flow Rate ("David Mackaway")
  premashing cereal grains (Alan McKay)
  Fermenting under pressure (David Passaretti)
  Dry Ice? ("Kevin Boyer")
  Refractometer Light Sources ("Angie and Reif Hammond")
  "..a bit of advice." **WARNING:OFF TOPIC EMAIL** ("Country Brewer- Penrith")

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---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2002 00:55:15 -0700 From: "Parker Dutro" <ezekiel128 at edwardwadsworth.com> Subject: RE: Cleaning Solutions I have used B-Brite, Star San, Straight-A, and Chlorine. Of all I prefer the Straight A. It was cheaper than the other oxy-cleaners, cleaned better, and rinsed clean off. I HAVE noticed a residue with the B-Brite, and I am working diligently to keep my carboy and bottles residue-free. I invested in a Jet Bottle Washer, (which I needed to do anyway) and am happy with it. However, as soon as the B-Brite is used up, I will make a point to get some Straight A, (may try PBW if it's as effective and inexpensive as is being said) I keep my stuff clean and de-goobered while storing it, and I use Iodophor before using it. I just wanted to back up Rick the chemist. Parker Dutro, Portland, Oregon Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2002 04:33:00 -0700 (PDT) From: Audie Kennedy <audie_24293 at yahoo.com> Subject: Possibly stupid sparge question I have a question about sparging. I use a large rectangular cooler for mashing. I have sparged in the "normal" way, and really don't understand the finer points, I suppose. I had to take "Chemistry for non-science majors" (better known as bonehead chemistry) 3 times in college... Anyway, what would happen if I added my normal amount of sparge water, STIRRED the grain heavily, and let it sit for another hour, then opened my spigot and drained off that liquid? Or if I added the water and didn't stir? What would be the effect on efficiency on soaking the grain? I see sparging as "rinsing" the remaining fermentables. Is this wrong? Audie Kennedy Wise, Va. Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2002 08:46:52 -0400 From: "David Root" <droot2 at rochester.rr.com> Subject: Yeast I am preparing to brew. I usually brew in a converted 1/2 keg Then I open ferment in another one with a gallon starter of Wyeast 1007 This forms a nice pancake of yeast on the top if the beer. After 6 days I rack into 2 cornies by drawing the beer from the bottom while the yeast stays floating on top. This works well for me. The beer is clear and ready for force carbonating. Are there any other yeasts that would provide me with a pancake of yeast on top of the beer to work with my system? I haven't had an infection in a long time. Thanks David Root West By Golly Shelby New York Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2002 09:37:09 -0400 From: "Doug Moyer" <shyzaboy at yahoo.com> Subject: re: cleaners and sanitizers Marc Sedam <marc_sedam at unc.edu> sez: "Once I found that Beer, Beer, and More Beer sells this stuff in bulk, I was golden. A four pound jar of PBW is $20..." Just a note: since Northern Brewer (http://www.northernbrewer.com) is kind enough to sponsor the HBD, I would like to suggest that you support them. They sell PBW for: 1 lb $6.95 4 lb $19.95 8 lb $30.95 No affiliation. I am not even a satisfied customer (yet). Brew on! Doug Moyer Salem, VA Star City Brewers Guild: http://hbd.org/starcity "There is a very fine line between 'hobby' and 'mental illness.'" ~ Dave Barry "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." ~ Galileo Galilei Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2002 09:38:11 -0400 From: "Mike" <brewski at inet99.net> Subject: Re: PVC pipe as pressure vessel There seems to be a lot of hot air, duck, going around about the wisdom of using schedule 40 PVC to pipe or hold compressed CO2. I to was leary of doing that knowing as someone else pointed out, when you have a catastrophic failure of a water pipe is one thing. Granted its messy but when a vessel with a hundred or so pounds in it, you have an explosion. Anyway, I done a Google search for "schedule 40 PVC" and got this sight http://www.otool.com/untitled12.htm Here 1/2" schedule 40 PVC's MAX PSI is 600 at 73F. "WO" Even 12" can take 130 PSI. Mike Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2002 13:49:35 +0000 From: "A. J. delange" <ajdel at mindspring.com> Subject: Plato and S.G. Sorry I haven't been able to participate in this thread (press of other business) previously. Tried to send Pete my notes on S.G. but they bounced. If you'll give me a good address I'll try again. WRT the subject discussion - Plato/Brix is the weight of extract in 100 grams of solution. Specific gravity is the ratio of the weight of the solution (at a specified temperature) to the weight of an equal volume of water (at a specified temperature which is usually, but not always, the same temperature as specified by the wort). The job of the Normal Eichungs Komission (chaired by Dr. Plato) was to determine the specific gravity of solutions of known strength to greater accuracy than those in use at the time and the result are tables accurate to 6 places to the right of the decimal point. The modern ASBC tables are based on interpolation into the Plato tables with correction to (20C/20C). It's a fairly simple matter to prepare a sucrose solution of known (if not exactly desired) strength. Tare a container and stir bar (best if the container can be closed e.g. a volumetric flask with stopper). Add pure sucrose and note weight. Add water, stopper, and note weight. Stir. The strength of the solution is the ratio of the weight of the sugar to the weight of the solution. You can adjust the strength down by adding more water and up by evaporation. Once you have the strength you want the trick is to measure the density of the solution before evaporation can get you. Here's where the stopper and long neck of a volumetric flask come in handy. Modern density measuring instrumentation sucks a small (couple mL) sample into an oscillating U-tube. The sample tube can be inserted right down the neck of the volumetric flask. Even so, the last measurement of a series from a flask prepared this way will read higher than the first because even the slightest amount of evaporation will be detected in measurements made to this level of accuracy. As has been pointed out, you can only measure density. Density is mass per unit volume while specific gravity is a ratio of weights and comes in two flavors depending upon whether the weights in air or in vacuuo (i.e. whether the weight of the volume of air displaced by the sample is accounted for or not). Thus in order to calculate specific gravity from density the weights of water and air at the temperatures of interest must be known. There are published tables for these. The reason for mentioning all this is that if you look in the Appendices of the MOAs you will see the rather hairy formula used by ASBC to convert the Plato tables to the ASBC tables. These factors are in it. Modern density meters have this info stored internally and so read in whatever units you want. WRT the sucrose/wort fiction: some experiments carried out as described above show that the common sugars (sucrose, maltose, fructose, glucose and even dextrine) produce solutions whose specific gravities are very close to one another for a given strength. There are, of course, other things in wort (proteins, phenols, hop acids and oils and minerals) but with the exception of perhaps protein and the minerals in Burton water these are in relatively small proportion compared to sugars. I think the reason sucrose was used is that it is less hygroscopic than the others. Finally, there is no contest between Plato and Specific gravity - it isn't a Mac/PC thing. A brewer must consider both. Plato tells him how many grams of extract are contained in 100 grams of his wort and specific gravity tells him the volume of 100 grams of wort. From this data he can calculate the grams (or pounds) of extract per liter (or gallon) of wort and thus determine the efficency of his brewhouse, compute the boiloff or dilution water required to change the strength of the wort going to the fermenter and so on. Needless to say most of this is moot in the case of the hydrometer that came with the extract brewing kit you got for Christmas. A.J. Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 06 Jul 2002 18:43:42 +0200 From: "Dr. Pivo" <dp at pivo.w.se> Subject: re: how long will bottles stay sanitized? Alan McKay asks if his sanitised bottles can wait a few days, and I haven't seen a reply yet. If there is one guy who has patiently answered "thousands" of questions, often the same ones, it is Alan.... so I'll give it a stab. My guess is that they are OK. On the same line, I will report how I've been "stung" by this thinking (much of my brewing knowledge is derived from "trial and error" with very much "error"). I sanitise most often with a hydrogen peroxide solution which I then flush out with the item inverted using regular ol' well water. Well under the standard hygiene reccomendations here, but I have no infection problems even with long storage of beer .... so why worry. At one point; I did this to a number of carboys, capped them before racking, and then racked and found I'd one more cleaned carboy than needed for the volume. Some number of weeks later (can't recall exactly, but a month would be a good guess) I was going to rack again and thought: "Hey, there's one that's already clean... that's one less I need to do (the "cleaning" side of brewing becomes like a festering carbuncle on one's backside with time). I racked to that carboy along side of some freshly cleaned ones, and low and behold, beer derived from that carboy eventually developed a sour tinge that worsened with time that I'm guessing acetobacter to be the author of. My reasoning was thus: When we sanitise, we are always leaving SOME bacteria, and the job is really to minimise them to a point that it will not have flavour influences. A rollicking yeast party seems to discourage these minute ammounts from ever getting a foothold (though I will admit, I've never run across what I consider an adequate explanation for exactly "why"..... alcohol, and lowering pH's do not seem to be completly adequate for the conservation powers that seem to appear in reality... I have actually contemplated alcohol and CO2 doctoring some sterile wort, and comparing it to an equivalent fermented beer, trying to "implant" them with pathogens, culture them and see who plates out bigger..... even have recently been looking at nitric oxide emmission (in humans) and wondering if I shouldn't cap a ferment and see if it is higher than ambient... but I do get these silly ideas, and there are limits to how much extra work even I will make for myself just to still my curiosity.... I could just be getting old). Even as there are always SOME bacteria left, there is likewise SOME nutrient for them left even after cleaning, and left undisturbed long enough those missplaced residents might well multiply. So while I would think nothing of just squirting out a newly emptied keg with my well water (when I knew it's recent contents were healthy) before filling with the next batch, I do not trust that sanitised items that have been left closed and wet will stay sanitised indefinately and prefer to get them filled fairly soon. It is tempting to blame my well water, and that "well" be true, but I have cultured it on a few media with "no growth".... but that is of course a relative thing, and finding the right medium "something" would surely turn up..... just not of a type or concentration that it has ever bothered my beer except the above example. Summa summarum? I think a week with a sulphite solution are completely within the limits of OK, but you'll be the first to know if it isn't. Dr. Pivo Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 06 Jul 2002 19:02:35 +0200 From: "Dr. Pivo" <dp at pivo.w.se> Subject: Plato vs SG Phil Yates writes: > Given that Plato only relates to sugar as a % weight of > the medium in question, I can't see any reason to adopt it for my own > brewing purposes. > Frankly, I've never seen much wrong with a good Platonic relationship.... I wouldn't of course have a disproportionate number of them.... We've all heard what happened to the Boston priests. If they get caught doing that 8 or 9 more times I think one should consider defrocking them. As related to brewing, one value of using Plato is to think in equivalent amounts. F'rinstance if wanting to prime with wort instead of a "dry" sugar of some sort, it's a handy sort of way of keeping in mind what's what. Otherwise, I'd say Phil's on the right track: "whatever makes you a happy brewer will probably make you brew more, and that's what makes you a better brewer." Dr. Pivo Return to table of contents
Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2002 08:41:56 +1000 From: "Phil Yates" <phil.yates at acenet.com.au> Subject: Steve Is Right Again One needs look no further than Noonan's NBLB page 312 to see a definition of Plato and confirm it is a weight/weight density measurement. Where I do find the use of Plato handy is in making up yeast starters. For example, if I want a two litre starter at 1040 SG, using Plato I know I need to add 10% malt extract to my two litres of water to achieve this. Again it is approximate but close enough for me. I just wish Steve would stop getting everything right, soon we'll be running out of things to argue about. Then where will the HBD be?!! Cheers Phil Return to table of contents
Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2002 10:01:37 +1000 From: "David Mackaway" <mackawad at ozemail.com.au> Subject: RIMS - Optimum Flow Rate A question for the collective out there. What are peoples views on what the best flow rate is for your wort through a RIMS system ? Dave Return to table of contents
Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2002 11:15:27 -0400 From: Alan McKay <amckay at neap.net> Subject: premashing cereal grains Marc Sedam writes an extremely detailed account of what happens in the mash with cereal grains. However detailed the account, I have to disagree with claim that pre-mashing is a requirement : > This is more important in commercial scale brewing where the > cereal mash has to be pumped Several years ago when I asked a brewmaster at Molson about this, he said the only reason he could think of for pre-mashing was the above, and he noted that I would understand the importance if I'd ever had to shovel several tonnes of retrograded corn or rice out of a vessel. On a homebrew level even if the cereal does retrograde, it will be far from unmanagable even in a 15 gallon batch size. > Had the starches not been broken > down, you would get tiny clumps of unfermentable corn starch > in the mash. Maybe if you didn't stir the mash properly or something. I have never premashed my starches and have used a great deal of rice, various types of corn including starch, grits and flakes, and even potato. I have never once had an unmanagable, retrograded mash, never had clumps of unfermentable starch, and never had starch haze problems in the fermenting beer. Some day maybe I'll try this pre-mash thing just for the sake of comparison, but so far I haven't really found a reason to try other than sheer curiousity. Of course the question presents itself "why wouldn't you?", given that the procedure is identical either way. If I were doing this for the first time I probably would do it this way. But I'm a man of habit. cheers, -Alan - -- http://www.bodensatz.com/ The Beer Site (tm) Return to table of contents
Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2002 09:36:27 -0700 (PDT) From: David Passaretti <dpassaretti at yahoo.com> Subject: Fermenting under pressure Does anyone know if there are any adverse/positive effects of fermenting under CO2 pressure? Is there any difference for ale or lager yeast. Is there a safe pressure range for yeast (eg 10, 20, 30psi)? Thanks for any information David Passaretti Cincinnati, OH Return to table of contents
Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2002 13:42:11 -0500 From: "Kevin Boyer" <kboyer at houston.rr.com> Subject: Dry Ice? Has anyone ever tried adding blocks of dry ice to wort to cool it quickly? Would the CO2 gas off into the wort and cause a problem during fermentation? Is potential infection an issue even with the dry ice being so cold? Kevin Boyer Houston, TX Return to table of contents
Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2002 20:07:28 -0400 From: "Angie and Reif Hammond" <arhammond at attbi.com> Subject: Refractometer Light Sources I have found that I get the sharpest, most distinct line when I read my refractometer in sunlight. Next best is a full spectrum (sunlight) florescent. Incandescent lights give a very fuzzy line, regular fluorescents can give a fuzzy line also. Reif Hammond Durham, NH Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2002 12:22:44 +1000 From: "Country Brewer- Penrith" <youre_my_valentine at bigpond.com> Subject: "..a bit of advice." **WARNING:OFF TOPIC EMAIL** Karl: "Country Brewer Penrith, Karl Speaking" Caller: Hi, I'm looking for a bit of advice. Can you help me?" Karl: Sure, How can I help you? Caller: Well, I had an accident a couple of years ago, back in umm august 1998. I was at work and I hurt my back. I didnt do anything at the time, didnt think about it as the boss at the time said that if I was going to sue him I could hand my notice in straight away... Karl: umm ... so I didnt do anything until 2001. My Back started hurting and I havent had a good nights sleep, well I dont think ive had a good nights sleep since the accident. Ive been meaning to go to a solicitor since then but havent been able to get the time....... Karl:ummm Caller:Can you tell me where I stand? Karl: Ummm...Mate.... this is a homebrew shop Caller: Pardon? Karl: this is a homebrew shop... Caller: what does that mean? Karl: I sell homebrew concentrates... umm ,stuff to make beer, wine and spirits...umm, I think you may have the wrong number..... Caller: So You cant help me? Karl: No, Unfortunately I cant, Sorry. Caller: Thats ok, Thanks anyway....Bye Karl: Thanks for calling, Bye... [Caller hangs up] Karl Valentine, Manager. The Country Brewer - Penrith 560 High St, Penrith, NSW, 2750. (02) 4731 5444 rainman at countrybrewer.com.au www.countrybrewer.com For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication. --Friedrich Nietzsche, famous German troublemaker (1844-1900) Return to table of contents
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